State Senate committee to hold hearing on Medicaid expansion next week

Jun. 28, 2013

Written by

Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

LANSING — After adjourning for the summer without taking a vote on a plan to expand Medicaid to 470,000 low-income Michiganders, the state Senate will hold a committee hearing on the plan next week.

Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, said Friday on the public television program “Off the Record” that the Government Operations Committee will meet Wednesday to begin discussing the expansion.

The hearing comes after Gov. Rick Snyder took to the road this week to urge citizens to tell their senators to return to work and vote on the expansion. Richardville predicted that the Senate will vote on the matter this summer, although only two session days are scheduled before the end of August.

The House of Representatives passed the expansion earlier this month with bipartisan support, but the matter stalled in the Senate amid a GOP revolt over the bill that has been associated with the Affordable Care Act. Snyder cut short a trade mission to Israel to shepherd the bill through the Senate on the body’s last day before the break. But when the Senate adjourned without voting, Snyder held a testy press conference telling the senators to take a vote, not a vacation.

Those words rankled Republicans in the Senate, who wanted more time to study the issue. And that irritation only increased when robocalls supporting the expansion were placed in the districts of GOP senators who opposed the bill, Richardville said.

After an hour-long discussion with Snyder about the expansion on Thursday, Richardville said: “I don’t think he’ll be saying we’re on vacation anymore.”

Snyder has several events planned next week, including stops in Livonia and Royal Oak and a tele-town hall on Monday, to talk up the Medicaid expansion. He wants to see a vote this summer because the longer it takes to pass the plan, the harder it gets to obtain federal approval of the changes Michigan is making to the expansion, said Snyder’s spokeswoman Sara Wurfel.

“The governor is very interested in working cooperatively with the Michigan Senate to provide them with as much information as possible,” she said. “But his events and visibility on this issue is not going to slow down.”

The expansion will be paid for 100% by the federal government through 2017; then the support will decline to 90% by 2020. Medicaid already covers 1.9 million people in Michigan. The expansion will extend coverage to people who fall between 100% and 133% of the federal poverty level. If passed, the expansion will bring in more than $200 million in federal money to the state.

Richardville appointed a work group earlier this week — all Republicans and all males — to come up with a Medicaid expansion plan that can get a majority of GOP support in the Senate. He said Friday that he will include Democrats in the group. All 12 Democrats in the Senate are expected to approve the expansion.